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I went to New York for Visual Studio Live 2015. It’s OK if you don’t know what that is. My eldest said it sounds like something involving geeks on ice. He was disappointed to learn that there was no ice.
I stayed at The Marriott Brooklyn Bridge, I asked for a room with a view, they said we’ll have a room for you in an hour. I went to a nail shop on Lawrence Street and got the worst pedicure EVER. The hotel called while the wax chick was trying to convince me to get my upper lip done (as if). I was so excited I gave the baggage check dude a generous tip, grabbed my luggage and raced to my 18th floor room.
I ..was..so..disappointed. My view was of a building under construction and a rooftop playground full of kids. Am I wrong for thinking that a room with a view – at a hotel with the word “bridge” in it’s name- meant a view of the water?

At least I was around the corner from Fulton Street and I enjoyed shopping from street vendors, cause I miss that sort of thing. I would have shopped some of the discount stores but I’m trying to do that frugal thing.

Had an awesome dinner with my two baby brothers at Sancho’s in Bay Ridge. And I got my water fix in by walking down to the Promenade . I miss being able to walk everywhere and I miss all the people. So I really enjoyed people watching as I walked.

I want this house

Regrets- conference hours, time and my iffy back meant I did not get to go back to the block. That’s OK, going to do it next year for sure-:)

I was a vendor at an event a few week ago and a woman walked up to my table and said “You know what you should do?”. Let me pause here a moment to say that I absolutely hate when people say that to me. Ok let’s continue..”You know what you should do? You should make American Girl doll stuff and put the little girls name on it.” Uhmmm Ok, that sounds really awesome. If I wanted to put names on things I would have made my husband a Manchester United hat by now don’t ya think?

But I did not say that. Instead I gave her my most gracious and grateful smile and said that it was a capital idea. As it turned out I made hardly any sales that day. The vendor next to me was a retired lady who sews the cutest doll clothes. So i thought to myself on that long ride home – well why not try making doll clothes? The should go fairly quickly and I like quick, win win all around.

Can you tell which of these are original and which are from patterns?

Well it’s not quite as easy or quick as I thought, because someone has the bad habit of going off script (or off pattern in this case). I’ve tried out a few patterns. I came up with a few of my own.

Oh and I bought an 18 inch doll. Just one more item to freak the kid out.

It’s not that I don’t want to blog. Nor is it that I don’t have topics to blog about. Time, time is my issue. I work a full time job, I put in anywhere from 40 to 60 hours a week, all on a computer.
Guess where I want to be when I am done for the day (or night)…that’s right crocheting. And heaven knows you can’t crochet and type at the same time.
I’ve decided,though, that I want to get back to blogging.
I’m getting closer to retirement and I need to start planning and implementing my next steps. I see people, who started blogging long after I did, having great success with it. I think it’s time I focused on my blog and my writing (I feel so incoherent these days).

I have been doing a lot of crocheting though and this year I am introducing my sunshine collection, which features slouch hats and beanies with a beachy theme – pink and white , turquoise and white, yellow and white, well you get the picture. They are available on my Etsy shop, I hope you like them!

I was recently “upgraded” to Contour. I was very excited – you can watch shows in one room, pause and continue in another room. I thought that would be cool. You have more stations available on OnDemand. The layout is beautiful . I thought that I would be happy with it but I spend less time watching than I had originally planned because:

1. One day, with no prior warning, the remotes just stopped working – naturally you think it’s a problem with the battery and you spend your time trying to fix that, then you find out that the other remote doesn’t work either…call Cox.

2. Select a show to watch ,hit start, view the black screen of nothingness. Go back, start again and hopefully it works. This will happen for every show that you watch (at least on the main box).

3. In my bedroom I have a secondary box and it has no clock. NO CLOCK, in a bedroom. How am I supposed to know what time my hot flashes wake me up if I don’t have a clock? Whose stupid idea was it to make a box with nothing but a tiny orange light? And while we’re on the subject of clocks, can I speak to the 20 year old who designed these, blue light on a black background? Even the 11 year old grandchild has trouble seeing it.

4. I watch more Amazon Prime and Netflix than I do my cable (which costs me a whole lot more). As soon as I get an hour or two of catching up on shows in than the box throws an error and I just give up for a couple of days. What make sthem think i want to call customer service every five minutes?

5. Speaking of customer service, they’re very nice, the wait times are fairly short, and they understand my frustration but cannot comprehend why I would want to be credited for the time that I spend NOT watching my very expensive cable programming.

Oh and sometimes it doesn’t pause the live shows . Or you stop a program in the middle and are forced to start from the beginning.

But that’s like 7 things and I only promised five. If you only watch live programming, Contour is fine for you. But if you can only watch television at certain times and are a huge fan of OnDemand, then don’t bother quite yet.

1. You can pee anywhere ..oh for crying out loud, you didn’t really believe that title did you? It’s what you call a loss leader, just a little something to get you into the store. I had a second surgery last week – no, not because the first one didn’t take- to repair my ureter which was kinked or sutured or ignored in such a way as to cause my birth canal to become Niagara Falls.

I can’t help thinking that if my gyn-surgeon had listened to me when I said “do not take all of my lady parts” I wouldn’t be lying here writing this. On “Burn Notice” Fiona would say “Should we shoot them?“. I think of her every time I tell someone new about what has happened to me , because they always ask “Can you sue them?”

Truth is that I probably could sue them but I’m a bleeding heart liberal (or so my right wing friends tell me) and I don’t see the fucking point in bringing a suit. Wait, let me go ahead and digress here :

When you are in recovery, you are fair game for anyone who wants to make a dishonest dollar. Please be careful. Stop being such a control freak, and turn your debit card and financial decisions over to your significant other or your Mom or some responsible adult other than you with the fuzzy mind and the inability to remember the words that you need to describe things and end sentences. End of digression.

So back to this lawsuit. My sister says that I shouldn’t do it for money but I should at least do it for all of the other women who could be hurt by this doctor, as well as what I have lost because my recovery from the first surgery never ended and so far this recovery has been no bed of tulips or whatever. I just want to get better and get back to work and life. I don’t want to spend a lot of time with lawyers or in courts. I don’t want to hurt any nice people (my gyn is a really nice lady) or ruin their practice /life. We’ll see.

So how do I feel? I feel even more emotional now than I did after the first one – because whatever residual hormones I had left are gone baby gone. I feel tired most of the time, short forays from my bed only provide a reason to go back to bed. I have kept a temperature above 99 every afternoon and evening since coming home (we can discuss some other time why they sent me home 24 hours after my surgery, even though my insurance approved a 4 night stay). This catheter is slowly sucking my energy and life-force (although I did manage to score an Amazon deal a few minutes ago,so I still have some juice).

I am sure that there are people who enjoy having catheters and I am also sure that they are really old and just tired of getting out of bed in the middle of the night to go potty.

Two weeks ago I had a total abdominal hysterectomy. Prior to my surgery I did a lot of research on the internet (because the internet never lies) about what to expect. I learned a lot at hystersisters.com as well as other places, that was really helpful.

I had several friends tell me about their hysterectomies ( who knew that it was such a popular procedure?) and honestly, some of their stories were more scary than helpful.

I don’t think my pain has been that bad. The only thing I remember about the recovery room is that when they tried to bring me out I felt the most intense pain I had ever felt in my life. I believe that I saw Scotty and he said something like “I think she’s going to blow” or maybe it was the anesthesiologist – I passed out, so who knows?

Right after my surgery I discovered that the ability to poop and pass gas had become the most important thing in my life. Having been forewarned, I took dulcolax stool softeners to the hospital with me and then promptly forgot that I had them. I walked as much as I could and was given Maalox and Milk of Magnesia and heaven only knows what else, but I still didn’t pass gas until my 2nd day in hospital. I did not eat very much the first few days, mostly drank juice, hot tea and soup. I had no appetite. Once I started eating, I got full really quickly and felt as if I would just burst. Going number two is not easy, I take a stool softener at least onc ea day and prior to my surgery, I watched this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqdNEx81d2Q.

Painkillers made me feel invincible which only lead to more pain, and then..I realized that my doctor had prescribed a finite amount of Percocet and 800 mg Ibuprofen and I was in a panic. What really happened was that in the hospital they gave me two Percocet every four hours no matter what my pain level was. So I got home and …took two Percocet every four hours. Now some people tell me that their painkillers knocked them out and their husbands had to wake them up to take their meds. this did not happen to me. I woke up in pain multiple times during the night , which sucked only because I am and always have been an awesome sleeper, I lay my head on the pillow at night and I wake up when the alarm goes off, period. I am desperately hoping that the good (sleep) times will return. My doctor prescribed Ambien to help me sleep, I took it two nights in a row but still woke up in the middle of the night, so I stopped because I did enough drugs in the 80s thanks.

There is such a thing as doing too much. I had visitors every single day my first week home. Visitors are really draining, I didn’t want to lay in bed and have people visit my bedside, so I would get up, comb my hair , put on decent clothes and sit with them. I also ventured out to joanns to buy yarn .I realized about 3 days into the first week that I was overdoing it, because I had lots of body aches and could not sleep. But that goes back to the painkillers, they make you feel like you weren’t just gutted and stitched up.

Food literally tastes like crap for a couple of days. The nice lady from the hospital kitchen called me every meal for my order – and every meal I drank tea and sent everything else back. Also things that I like and enjoy doing, I just can’t be bothered with sometimes. Reading, watching TV, drinking coffee, crocheting.

Let’s talk about staples. I read a forum post that was about four pages long, where someone wanted to know if it hurt to have your staples out. Everyone said NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT, NO PAIN involved. Only one person said “yes, it hurts like hell”. But who’s going to listen to that one lonely voice? At 9 days post-op, my husband took me to the doctor to have my staples removed. My staples had been the bane of my existence for nine days and I was happy to have them out…until the nurse pulled the first one. There were I think 15 to 25 staples, the pain increased as she moved from my navel to my pelvis, some of them were scabbed over, I squeezed her hand so hard that I don’t know how she was able to continue. afterwards the doctor came in and gave me a lecture about doing too much ( ok my doctor is female and it was more like when your mother has discovered one of your transgressions and you wish she’d just shut up and beat you already). So I promised to stay in bed for the next two weeks and she gave me a shot of something in my hip ( I do hate needles) which put me in bed for the rest of the day.

I went back to work my first day home ( I work on the computer so I don’t have to leave the house). My office is on the top floor of our house. Before I went in to the hospital, the hubby and I set up my dining room as my recovery office and patted ourselves on the back for thinking of it. It turns out that it’s probably not a good idea to sit up in a chair working for hours on end when your stomach is held together with industrial sized staples. Please see number 5. We ordered an over bed hospital table right after my doctor’s appointment and I wish that we had done that in the first place.

Menopause- since they took everything, I assume that menopause will come soon. So far I’ve had instances of sweating at night – nothing more than my usual night sweats no sheet soaking or any of that. I have not had any hot flashes. I asked my mother, she laughed and said she had never experienced any of the symptoms. Here’s hoping I take after her.

When did doctoring start being about the money and not about the patient? When did it become the norm to have a visit with your doctor where he or she never actually touches any part of your body? I don’t know if it’s the part of the country that I’m in or if this is happening everywhere.
I was recently diagnosed with a huge mass in my uterus which was discovered by my Korean masseuse (I dunno is it politically incorrect to note that my masseuse was Korean? I’m less than a week post op and I really ain’t got time for that, I got pain I’m trying to stay ahead of).
Ok, maybe some doctors don’t like to touch their patients for whatever reason, but how about the one who called in a prescription for something I didn’t have? What if I was totally stupid and went ahead and used the prescription for the thing that I didn’t have? And what about the doctor who would not call in my BP meds refill unless I made an appointment to see him? And he said this to me while I was standing… in front of him… in his office…on a Friday(care to guess when the next opening in his schedule was?).

Today’s post was written by my youngest(who is really,really looking forward to picking up the new pokemon game tomorrow):

It’s been 14 years since that fateful Christmas morning where my parents gifted me with a yellow Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red and Blue. As a kid, I watched Pokemon on TV, so when I ripped off the wrapping paper and saw the word “Pokemon” in big, yellow letters, I flipped out! I never thought I would get to be like Ash Ketchum and become a Pokemon trainer. I remember staying up as late as I could just to play Pokemon. I played all day and all night. I battled other trainers, captured rare and powerful Pokemon, and became the Champion of the Pokemon League. I remember thinking as a kid that this was probably going to be the only Pokemon game I would get to play. Oh boy, was I wrong.

14 years later, I’m now 20 years old and in college studying to become a teacher. In a week, Pokemon X and Y will be released to the masses and I cannot wait to get my hands on it. My mother, a crocheter and very hard working woman, tells me she wants to do something new for her Etsy. I suggested that she should do a Pokemon-inspired line since X and Y are coming out soon. Ever since then, she’s been working nonstop to get it done. So, in celebration of 14 years of Pokemon, I give to you Niseylee’s Pokemon Collection!

I knew that it had been a while since I posted anything, but I did not realize that it had been such a long while. I’ve been really hogtied at work and in my spare time I’ve been working on the Fall/Winter collection ,which oddly enough) includes cruise wear. We are taking a cruise for New Year’s instead of doing the same ole same ole, so you know where my mind is.
My beautiful niece was nice enough to pose for a few product shots for me. She’s really good at this modeling thing.

Chain 58 st and join with slip st to first st. Row 1: Hdc in each st Row 2: 1 sc and 1 dc in same st, skip 1 st ,repeat. Row 3: 1 sc in each st worked in the back loop only Row 2 and 3 is the pattern stich. Continue pattern stitch until the work measures 14.5 cm (I did som increases in the beginning, but I think it would be better not to do it, my hat got a little bigger after wearing it a few times. Maybe I even should have started with less stitches).

When the hat measures 14.5 cm, stop the stitch pattern, and start crocheting sc in each st round and round (I am too lazy to join each round, so I just go round and round!). I did this until I felt the hat was long enough (not very informative, I know..), and started decreasing. I think this is how I did it: